Ambient Techno is my Friend.

Horseradish Mustard

Time, speed, precision, acceleration, velocity and it's relation to the availability of various flavours of mustard.

I wouldn't have thought that I'd finish a book while I'm under 20. So far, my attention span has kept me from reading just about everything I was interested in. At least, I blame it.

I don't know what was different with Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything . Maybe the eclectic topics, the writing style, or maybe because I kept it around myself. I got it from my friend Johannes after playing some football with Wassilij and Armin. I wanted to go and drink a glass of applejuice, and asked Johannes if he has something interesting to read. I actually meant a magazine and was surprised he handed me a, gosh, real book. I picked it up anyway. After finishing my applejuice I noticed I wanted to keep on reading, and asked if I can borrow it.

There you go. Now I have done almost 300 pages in not even two weeks. I think that's not bad for someone who usually doesn't manage to get beyond page 30.

Faster is about time and (just about) everything surrounding it. From clocks to marketing, biorhythms, social and psychological changes, instant coffee and, most importantly, mustard. It was not only entertaining but also teaching. I tried to be more conscious about my behaviour regarding time, and still do. It was fun to find some of me in that book. Even extremes came to light: doubts about my choice of work, which I eventually scratched again, because actually Netalley Networks does not hurry at all.

The last chapter was hard to read though, as I was on the train to Germany (where I am again) and in front of me there was this scarily beautiful Czech girl (Mondgesicht, Sommersprossen, gaaanz grosse Augen, und die Zehen, mah, ach ach.). It was hard to keep my eyes on the book. I think she noticed. I was not staring though, mind you. (What the hell, suddenly I see good looking women again. Maybe it's the glasses?)

So, I can really recommend this book to anyone who feels too hurried (in whatever way), or has problems managing his own time. Yes, even though it was released in 2000, and quotes stuff from 1998. And I'd like to get some recommendations from you (swhackers I'm calling you!). It doesn't matter what topic, I want to find out if I have learnt to read.

Oh and, check out Benjamin Walker's Theory of Everything, which I came to adore recently.

Now where are my book recommendations?

Screw You

Replacing my PowerBooks harddisk was a fun and interesting journey. But the best of it all: I'm not whining about my harddisk anymore.

Tomorrow it would be a week ago that I replaced my quite exhausted harddrive with a new 80 Gigabyte (you know, 80.000.000.000 bytes) one from Seagate. (Long sentence, eh?) The only disks I own that didn't die after some time were built by them. The others are all covered with a big black BORKED. And wow, it's been ages since I copied 20 Gigabyte worth of content that fast. Getting the harddrive in was ... well, I had no idea what I was doing. Even though I worked for an Austrian Apple reseller and did things like that day by day. The reasons is probably that the 12" PowerBooks came after I quit. (You wouldn't have guessed so, would you?)

(Oh and, there's not only a new harddisk in it, but also an old too big screw where it doesn't belong. And I'm missing a screw. And some other part. Don't ask.)

Anyway, I tried to open the backside of the laptop, like you usually do with the bigger PowerBooks, but there was a screw hanging so I couldn't open it. It still hangs in there. I tried to get it out for almost a day, but when I called McSHARK they told me that screw has nothing to do with getting to the harddrive. Damnit. They described it to me on the phone, because I didn't find any howto on opening a 12" PowerBook. So thats why I'll describe it here. Please note, this will void your warranty if it didn't expire yet.

First, get off the keys F1, F2, F11 and F12 - don't be too harsh, as you can see I lost my F12 key (but during a cleaning attempt). Between these you should find a round silvery sticker, take it off and you'll see the screw. Get it out. Turn the PowerBook get the plate off that covers the additional RAM. On the top there should be a black screw visible, get it out (not completely). Now you should be able to get off the keyboard. It would be good not to destroy the cable in the process.

You should see a whole bunch of screws and some silvery weird thingies. One of them covers the trackpad cable, and you guessed it, get it out. Now remove the screws you see. At the sides (in front of the DVD slot and the ports) and the back there are screws you need to get out as well, but on the back just the upper ones.

Get the cover off, but note that there's a cable on the left, so just lie the cover next to the PowerBook so you don't have to fiddle with these incredibly small cables.

Hooray, there it is, the harddisk. The rest should be obvious. The gum-or-whatever-related parts were so tightly fixed on the harddisk that I only got one of the metal things that the gum-or-whatever related parts are fixed at out of it by using force. (Don't you agree with me, my choice of language here is incredible, no?)

So now I use Tiger with it (I had it before I got the harddisk actually). Most of it is quite cool, although the interface of Mail is bad. I'm working on a widget for Plazes with Johan and Philipp, but more about that later.

And to whomever that runs Planet Swhack, I feel honoured to be of enough interest, I will get you a tech related feed as soon as possible.

Bluebells

An evening with a magician of sound.

Yesterday was the first time I went to a concert alone. Thanks to Philipp's VORRP, a time-table search tool for the Viennese and eastern Austria public transport system, I knew how to get there. The last time I was at the Szene, my age was 14 and I was seeing the Sahara Hotnights (I almost drooled over their bass player) and The Donnas. A little bit more than 4 years later:

The crowd was dominated by the dark emo people I usually avoid. Okay, Patrick Wolfs homepage should have let me expect that. But then he was on Children of Mu. Ah well. Lots of emo-kids. That really annoyed me during about one third of the concert.

No laptop on stage. But lots of instruments. A violin with a somewhat broken bow, an opened up piano, and an okulele plus an even smaller guitar-like instrument. Looked like the concert is going to be very much unlike his first album Lycanthropy. And yes, most was from the new album. He played some new songs too, and gladly he interpreted a few partially very electronic songs in a new light. (Gave me the chance to let everyone see that I know the lyrics!)

The annoyance stopped at the point he noted that the following song is about his garden, especially the bluebells. (It's the british accent, I tell you.) That was just so sweet that I couldn't resist liking it. It kind of triggered something that I had lost some time ago. Can you call innocence a feeling?

I still would've enjoyed a laptop on stage and some extra-distorted beats painting the background of his very special singing. But the concert showed me that I should have a second look at Wind in the Wires, and listen to it with a new understanding of Patricks work in general.

All in all I enjoyed it, despite the non-moving emo crowd and the lack of "unnatural" beats. He showed off his skills (singing and playing violin at the same time stunned me a little) and his nice clothes. My photos are like all the time, rather bad (the one Itook with my normal camera are even worse). Yes, a very confused and unstructured entry, I agree.

Dingdingdingdingdingding!!!

Expierence fascinating 900 TV channels for no money! Your education will thank you.

This face will probably be mostly recognised by people with German TV channels. It's the Jamba (don't click the link) ad for the Crazy Frog ringtone. I'm not going to tell the whole Jamba story here. It's already annoying enough. Anyway, why do I see Jamba ads? Because VIVA apparently streams its society-down-dumbing-program into the web! YAY!

But VIVA is not the only one. Yesterday I got pointed to a whole lot of TV channels that stream into the web! There are some actually interesting ones too. I for one like 3sat. wwiTV is really worth checking out, especially for the ones without boob tubes or the sad beings that live in another country but would prefer to spend their lives with some dullness of their beloved home.

Another note for those who care: good television comic series for kids seem to be extremely sexy, at least their effect. *cough*

Recovering

This post comes way too late and will be therefore way too long. Most peoples attention span will probably only allow them to scroll over the photos. But I've even got some video clips! Uhm, enough whining...

I have been waiting for the Donaufestival as long as I've heard rumours abour who is coming. I went nuts when I noticed some of the artists are a few of my recent favourites. Last Saturday, I met Wassilij and Clemens in Floridsdorf, the area where a lot of Viennas rednecks reside, to go to Korneuburg by train. The location was nice, they had some nice seats, but awful rice with a weird curry-sauce that cost far too much. I didn't take my camera so the photos I took have quite bad quality (phone-camera, bleh).

Fuck the part that interests noone: Radian started first, we didn't know them, they played some jazzy noisy electronics and it was nice overall, but a little bit too calm, I would've prefered something energetic. It's great stuff to listen at home though, I think.

Richard Devine was next and played a lot faster than I expected. It was cool, and fun to look at, especially when he was coming into a variation. Oh variations were a bit monotonous, always the same kind of effects and kick in, but it didn't really matter, it came across very nice. What surprised me, he seems to make some kind of relation to Apple but he was using a x86 laptop on stage. The ambient piece at the end of the show was really good, it felt like he gave us time to relax after his beat-storm.

Photos by Ruth Ehrmann

Then we got to the masters of leaving music somewhere between dance- and undanceable: Pan Sonic (formerly Panasonic). I saw them last year in the Fluc Mensa, and I found them better that time. I think they even played some ragga beats, but I'm not sure.

Photos by Ruth Ehrmann

Headliner this evening was Jamie Lidell, a very good decision. His show was incredibly good, very dynamic, playing singing sampling messing you name it. I partially knew it from Con.trust wird Fünf. I wasn't paying much attention back then, but hey, this time I did and he rocked a lot. He even played a long version of Multiply which i think everyone enjoyed a lot. And you can too: Wassilij made a video with his übercool cellphone covering almost all of the song. Hooray!

Photos by Ruth Ehrmann

After that we went back to Vienna. No bus, no bikes, no car: just two hours of walking beside the danube and over some fields and rails...

Next day we were a little bit too late because we had to pump up my bikes tyres (all Wassilij's fault!) and I got all wet because I was using a BMX. Meh. Chris Clark already started playing too. For some fucked up reason he was the first playing. He deserves a better time in my opinion. He was playing a lot of new stuff, but also the good stuff from his releases. Although I know it almost all by heart, I was still having goosebumps all over. Chris, if you read this, come again again again!

Photos by Ruth Ehrmann

c64 was alright. And thats about that. (Yes I'm too lazy.)

Venetian Snares opened up with my favourite song from Rossz Csillag Alatt Született: Hajnal (sample from Planet-µ). I never had my hands out of the pockets when I was moving to music in public. Well, until then. Probably the most energetic concert I've been to so far. I hope he's coming back in October.

Photos by Ruth Ehrmann

My friend Nikola was screaming Amon Tobin! while the master prepaired the encore, a few times, which pissed Mr. Funk so off that he replied Suck my fucking nipples! (or something along this line). He also spit off the stage, and after Nikola wanted to enter the stage he threw him off. Then he stopped playing, much to a lot of peoples disappointment. When I later asked Aaron how much Nikola pissed him off, he replied Enough to make me stop playing, enough to bite off his nose.. Oh well.

(Note aside, if there's something interesting linked on a fanpage. Guess what!)

I found Amon Tobin wasn't so great, I expected more. But hey, after Chris Clark and Venetian Snares, thats just not the music you want to hear. Same goes for Cristian Vogel who seems to be okay but not in that context. People that came for Tobin and him probably thought the same about my favourites ;)

The bike tour back to Vienna was nice. No rain anymore, I fell on the bike while I was standing, great potential for artsy fartsy photos, but noone had a proper working camera anymore :/. There would've been a lot of nice shots...

Dälek played on a so called secret gig in the Monestary on Sunday. Another great concert, and probably the one with the most fucked up use of a turntable ever. Still, the turntablist, was screaming into the needle (or something) and modifying that with a wha wha and other effects. Great noise. Before the encore, Oktopus gave a little speech, saying one should never go to a Dälek show over 10 euros and other nicities (the show there cost 5, yay!). It was so inspiring that I got their newest record there. Hehe. Johan made a few shots:

Now I have a cold, and I'm trying to recover (even got some medication...). Yesterday (by the way my birthday - even I had to be reminded a couple of times) my head was feeling like it'd explode.

But Patric Catani is going to be at Serious!¡Pop and the Noisecamp (somewhat of a joined event it seems) on the 14th and Patrick Wolf in the Szene Wien on the 13th - and I want to go there. Wish me luck.

Holländische Schimpfworte

Betreff: Meine E-Mail Signatur

Die kommt anscheinend an. Und nicht nur bei ihm, auch anderswo hat man schon Komplimente aufgegriffen. Harrrrr!

Aftermath

I spent almost 4 weeks in a world that differs extremely from my usual environment. Easy? Normal? Comfortable?

Not really, no, and partially. Comfort would be something else than food that doesn't taste so well and time that you mostly can't manage yourself, because you depend on others. It's all far from normal - I'm some kind of invader there. Most people do not understand what I am doing and why I do it my own way - if work, education, or even not eating meat doesn't matter. People show me, even if not intentionally, that they're not interested in me or my views. So I felt alone, which wasn't very easy in first place.

But I learned a very important lesson: it's not important to get others to accept me and my decisions, especially if they do not have any effect on my life. It may be obvious to you, the reader, but it took me some time to actually live this thought. Squaring circles proved impossible so far.

On the radio, there's Fettes Brot, Green Day and others from my early youth I forgot. That felt really strange because a few years ago everyone thought I'm nuts because I listened to this kind of music. Times change, eh?

I'm doing okay with learning how to drive - theoretically and practically. Once I get a car, it's definitly going to be an automatic one - I for one think normal cars are a usability mess.

It's been a very important trip, not only for my eyes, and it's going to be continued at the end of this month when I'm going back to do my drivers licence tests.

I got my eyes replaced

Finally I'm not only acting like a smartass, now I even look like one!

I'm still feeling a little wobbly (can't run) and actually the (pretty pretty) girl that gave me the paper with the values seems to be a little dyslexic: it's -1.75 on the right, not 0.5 - that's something different (I have no idea what it means though).

Oh and I'm coming back to Vienna tomorrow. Anyway, whatcha think?